Posted
by
samzenpus
on Sunday April 13, 2014 @08:50PM
from the mi-go-beach dept.

astroengine (1577233) writes "In July 2015 we get our first close look at the dwarf planet Pluto and its moon, Charon — a fact that has scientists hypothesizing more than ever about what we might see there. One of the latest ideas put forward is that perhaps the collision that likely formed Pluto and Charon heated the interior of Pluto enough to give it an internal liquid water ocean, which also gave the small world a short-lived plate tectonics system, like that of Earth."

It was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh. Pluto is the only planet to be discovered by an American.

Tombaugh sat in 30 degree temperatures with a wooden telescope (that he built himself at his own expense) laboriously taking pictures at long intervals so he could measure (by flipping photographic plates back and forth) if anything moved.

It wasn't until he was able to use a 13-inch astrograph that he found Pluto in 1930. This guy was a stone cold badass. Nobody has any right to deny him his discovery.

It's all just a matter of what we choose to call things and how we choose to categorize things. Lumping things into categories based on similar characteristics is helpful for a number of reasons.

If you go back and look at the history of when and why Ceres (and Vista, and Pallas, etc.) was demoted from planetary status, you'll see all sorts of similarities. The continued discovery of Kupier bodies shows Pluto was part of a larger community, just like Ceres.

I, for one, am not wedded to nine planets. Or eight. Or fourteen, for that matter....

Fair enough. My mistake. Most people who whine about Pluto in the terms you used want to go back to 9 planets, and only 9, because "tradition".

I'd prefer to create a, admittedly still arbitrary, broad definition of planet as "any natural object that is above [a certain size**], and is not a star or stellar remnant." So brown dwarves, but not white. The Moon is a planet, as is Titan and the Galilean moons. Pluto is a planet, but so is Charon. And Ceres - as well as hundreds, possibly thousands of KBO/Oort-ob

You're entitled to your opinion, even if it's rather non-standard as to what does or doesn't constitute a planet. Personally, I don't think anything that doesn't have a) solid ground and b) an atmosphere to speak of should be considered a planet; as such, I recognize only two planets in the solar system, Venus and Earth. (Unfortunately astronomers keep on disagreeing with me on the matter.)

Now I'm joking, of course, but really, my definition is at least as good as yours.

... of the solar system 4 billion years ago and not more recently , then the chances of that water still being liquid without any further external heating - the energy from the sun at plutos orbit is so slight its irrelevant - I suspect are pretty damn close to zero.